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May. 27th, 2003 07:56 pmOne of the things I love about the new job and which frightens me to death about the new job is that I finally get my wish, a chance to do more of the multimedia side of the house, as well as writing. I love doing graphics, love the idea of programming interactions and simulations, but it frightens the sh*t out of me, because these days I'm working without a net. :) Before, if I got to something tricky, I could bail out by assigning a graphic artist to it, but...low and behold, I'm now it for graphics support. I'm considered the "big" gun. It's exhilarating in its way. I work best when the pressure is on and my back is against the wall. It's like cramming for a final exam. By golly, I'll learn something when I HAVE to! I may fight it to the bitter end, it may be like straining to pass a watermelon, but I'll know what I need to know!
The major thing that continually amazes me here is that they trust their employees to know how to do their job. Omigawd, late last week, the two big cheeses asked me -- ME?! -- what software and hardware I needed for some of the heavy-duty multimedia we have planned. They wanted to make sure I had the tools I needed. Good grief, supportive employers! I'm BESIDE myself! I continually want to spin around and check to see who they are talking to.
===
I need a day of rest from my long weekend. Mike got up grumbling about wanting to calling in sick, which made me sigh heavily -- new employee here, only one day of leave earned thus far. R-r-r-rick is here for the month; Dave has the week off, J Kev was here for the weekend, so where we'd normally do our widely acclaimed slug impression , we actually got off our duffs a bit and gadded about town.
Last night Dave *ALMOST* bought a used Lexus. You must understand, Dave's a bit...how to put this...shall we say "conservative" with money? It was a fully decked-out 2000 ES300 with 41K miles on it. They were willing to dicker down to $20,700... Dave is pondering upon it even now. We've watched the process time and time again; he must deliberate, suffer, research, agonize, wring his hands, argue the pros and cons. We've been nagging him because he's needed a new car for quite some time. His moonroof leaks, but he didn't mind that it poured water after a good rain on the passengers because the driver's corner stayed dry -- he'd grin, pull a towel from under his seat, and offer it to you. Then one day, he stopped suddenly and this deluge of water poured over his head, drenching him. I grinned, reached under the seat and offered him the same towel he always gave us. We felt a kind of heavenly retribution had finally occurred. He has plumber's tape sealing the hole to this day. Of course, the car now smells mildewy inside. We noticed on one trip that Dave's speedometer had an increasing error of margin the faster he drove; for instance, his speedometer might say 80 MPH, but the GPS would say he was actually going 70 MPH. Then his car starting making a SPROING noise. It was comical--the exact same sound you here in cartoons when a machine breaks and springs pop through the sides. He found out it was the VSS, variable speed sensor. Now the car is making some gawdawful grinding noise as he drives it. We all know the end is near.
===
God help me. I didn't want to 'fess up to the level of stupidity I had achieved, but I needed room on my laptop so I started putzing around in my download directory. I've got downloads from *years* back. I was looking at programs and then deleting them as necessary. Well, turns out one program was the client software if you wanted to set up an internet cafe. I thought (no, wrong word, *thinking* had nothing to do with it) it might be interesting to see how it worked.
Well, lemme tell you...it worked.
Worked damned well.
So well that I was completely and totally locked out of my own computer.
Not even booting safe mode and uninstalling could regain me control. Not even DOS.
::faceplants::
So I finally did what I've been putting off for almost two years, I installed the 40 gig drive into the notebook and installed XP. Then I put my 20 gig into my MP3 player and connected it via USB to the laptop so I could pull my data off.
Nightmare.
Anyway, so I got wireless running again, my data accessible, but now I have this annoying problem. XP keeps telling me that my network connection's cable is unplugged.
Um, wireless, remember?
You remember, I remember, but Windows XP can't seem to.
Every few minutes, XP puts up a little notification on the taskbar. "Network cable unplugged." Then IE and AIM stop working until XP decides that the network cable is plugged after all.
So I hit the web. You know the drill, STFW.
Net result: annoyances.org (which documents annoying Windows quirks and bugs) and many other sites have the problem documented, but no solutions other than to say it seems to be a gen-u-ine XP/2000 glitch.
(#$@&(*&$#!
The major thing that continually amazes me here is that they trust their employees to know how to do their job. Omigawd, late last week, the two big cheeses asked me -- ME?! -- what software and hardware I needed for some of the heavy-duty multimedia we have planned. They wanted to make sure I had the tools I needed. Good grief, supportive employers! I'm BESIDE myself! I continually want to spin around and check to see who they are talking to.
===
I need a day of rest from my long weekend. Mike got up grumbling about wanting to calling in sick, which made me sigh heavily -- new employee here, only one day of leave earned thus far. R-r-r-rick is here for the month; Dave has the week off, J Kev was here for the weekend, so where we'd normally do our widely acclaimed slug impression , we actually got off our duffs a bit and gadded about town.
Last night Dave *ALMOST* bought a used Lexus. You must understand, Dave's a bit...how to put this...shall we say "conservative" with money? It was a fully decked-out 2000 ES300 with 41K miles on it. They were willing to dicker down to $20,700... Dave is pondering upon it even now. We've watched the process time and time again; he must deliberate, suffer, research, agonize, wring his hands, argue the pros and cons. We've been nagging him because he's needed a new car for quite some time. His moonroof leaks, but he didn't mind that it poured water after a good rain on the passengers because the driver's corner stayed dry -- he'd grin, pull a towel from under his seat, and offer it to you. Then one day, he stopped suddenly and this deluge of water poured over his head, drenching him. I grinned, reached under the seat and offered him the same towel he always gave us. We felt a kind of heavenly retribution had finally occurred. He has plumber's tape sealing the hole to this day. Of course, the car now smells mildewy inside. We noticed on one trip that Dave's speedometer had an increasing error of margin the faster he drove; for instance, his speedometer might say 80 MPH, but the GPS would say he was actually going 70 MPH. Then his car starting making a SPROING noise. It was comical--the exact same sound you here in cartoons when a machine breaks and springs pop through the sides. He found out it was the VSS, variable speed sensor. Now the car is making some gawdawful grinding noise as he drives it. We all know the end is near.
===
God help me. I didn't want to 'fess up to the level of stupidity I had achieved, but I needed room on my laptop so I started putzing around in my download directory. I've got downloads from *years* back. I was looking at programs and then deleting them as necessary. Well, turns out one program was the client software if you wanted to set up an internet cafe. I thought (no, wrong word, *thinking* had nothing to do with it) it might be interesting to see how it worked.
Well, lemme tell you...it worked.
Worked damned well.
So well that I was completely and totally locked out of my own computer.
Not even booting safe mode and uninstalling could regain me control. Not even DOS.
::faceplants::
So I finally did what I've been putting off for almost two years, I installed the 40 gig drive into the notebook and installed XP. Then I put my 20 gig into my MP3 player and connected it via USB to the laptop so I could pull my data off.
Nightmare.
Anyway, so I got wireless running again, my data accessible, but now I have this annoying problem. XP keeps telling me that my network connection's cable is unplugged.
Um, wireless, remember?
You remember, I remember, but Windows XP can't seem to.
Every few minutes, XP puts up a little notification on the taskbar. "Network cable unplugged." Then IE and AIM stop working until XP decides that the network cable is plugged after all.
So I hit the web. You know the drill, STFW.
Net result: annoyances.org (which documents annoying Windows quirks and bugs) and many other sites have the problem documented, but no solutions other than to say it seems to be a gen-u-ine XP/2000 glitch.
(#$@&(*&$#!
